XCD Hasselblad 25mm F2.5 V

This ultra-wideangle lens is built for Hasselblad’s medium-format mirrorless cameras, such as the X2D 100C and 907X 100C. But how does it perform? Joshua Waller finds out

- Joshua Waller

This ultra-wideangle lens for Hasselblad’s medium-format mirrorless cameras is designed for use in a variety of situations, with obvious examples being landscapes, architecture, and interiors. However, the firm also says that it is particularly designed to give great results in low-light conditions, such as astrophotography, urban street and nightscape photography, and night landscape photography.

The lens is designed with high-resolution cameras in mind. Hasselblad offers 102MP medium format cameras, including the 907X 100C and X2D 100C, the latter of which I used for this review. It is, of course, also compatible with Hasselblad’s other mirrorless medium format cameras.

Whilst this lens isn’t as small as the firm’s XCD 28mm F4 P , it is brighter at F2.5, and wider giving a 20mm equivalent view. It also features a push/pull focus ring for selecting between auto and manual focus, as well as a customisable control ring. It’s relatively lightweight at under 600g, and reasonably small in terms of medium format lenses. In fact it doesn’t look out of place next to full-frame lenses.

Features

The lens features an upgraded 10-blade leaf shutter unit, which allows for faster exposures of 1/4000sec. The same shutter can be found in many of Hasselblad’s newest lenses, whilst previous lenses used a 4-blade design.

There is no in-lens optical image stabilisation. So if this is something you’re specifically looking for, then you’ll need to get a camera with in-body image stabilisation. This can be found in the Hasselblad X2D 100C.

The aperture starts at f/2.5, as you’d expect, and can be stopped down to f/32. Optically the lens is made up of 13 elements in 10 groups, with 4 aspherical elements, and 3 extra-low dispersion elements.